In conventional hard disk drives, the area density capability is limited by the inability to generate sufficient magnetic field so that the anisotropy field of each magnetic grain in a disk medium is artificially constrained. Such constraints limit the minimal size of magnetic grains in the media, hence limiting the area density that can be reached with sufficient magnetic thermal stability of the disk media and sufficient signal-to-medium-noise ratio.
An alternative approach is to use heat to assist the recording process. At an elevated temperature, the field required to reverse the magnetic moment orientation in the storage layer of the media becomes significantly smaller than that at ambient. This scheme is known as heat assisted magnetic recording, i.e., HAMR.
However, current HAMR technology utilizes a Curie point writing mechanism in which the write temperature exceeds the Curie temperature of the media. When the medium cools down to below Curie temperature, magnetization re-occurs in the presence of a recording field and the recording of a data bit is accomplished. The Curie temperature writing scheme requires the recording media to be heated to a relatively high temperature that could cause medium structural variation. Further, the re-occurrence of the uniform magnetization appears to be relatively slow and also requires rapid heat dissipation perpendicular to the film to prevent lateral expansion of the thermal energy.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,834,026 to Fullerton discloses a magnetic recording medium for thermally-assisted recording that comprises a bilayer of a high-coercivity, high-anisotropy ferromagnetic material and a switching material, like FeRh, that exhibits a switch from antiferromagnetic to ferromagnetic at a transition temperature less than the Currie temperature of the high-coercivity, high-anisotropy ferromagnetic material.